


lights will guide you home

by ephemeralstar



Series: maybe sprout wings [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Clerics, Fantasy Religion, Gen, if ur one of my party members u legally have to tell me, questioning faith, this is just me reacting to everything that went on in tonight's session, this session was a lot don't tell my group i write fics about them from my character's perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 23:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18670522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralstar/pseuds/ephemeralstar
Summary: Yin starts a to-do list the day the rogue threatens to start a holy war "for fun".1. Stop Ishramel from starting a Holy War.2. Remind Rook to kill Ishranel.3. Keep Rook safe.That last point is not related to the first two. Mostly.





	lights will guide you home

There are three items on Yin's to-do list that he started at the end of a very long day, of a very long week, of what's proving to be a very long year. He hasn't known this party for long but he's come to respect at least a few of them. Dante, the genasi, is an unknown quantity, but they are strong, and he appreciates when he comes to play the voice of reason, or more commonly the voice of too-late-reason-now-healing, that they at least half-listen to him, amid their own harebrained schemes. They're one of the few that actually listens when Yin decides his voice is a necessary one amid the cacophony of shouting that usually makes up the ' _problem solving_ ' attempts of this ragtag bunch of misfits he's collected. The others, not so much. 

Well, aside from one.

You see the sorcerer is quiet; young but powerful and with an affinity for casting disintegrate. She is formidable, if rather reserved, and she's still attempting to live down the moment in which she almost blew them all to smithereens. 

He has less time and less patience for their monk, peaceful despite her blood-bending ways, capricious despite her pacifist raison d'etre. He is not afraid, however, his armour is too thick for her to pierce; she holds no power over him.

There are a few others, much like the sorcerer, a wizard who is just as quiet, but no less lethal, and barbarian, slowly going out of his mind, but he keeps to himself when he's not needed for a fight. He trusts them not to kill him, enough so that he doesn't kill them in return, and he's never been one for stereotypes, so he appreciates the Teifling, Havok, as someone who he can go shot for shot with at the end of the a quest. 

It's the rogue he is wary of. Ishranel. The man would sell his own mother; undervalue and overprice her in the same thought, claiming he was raised only by the deal he'd seen fit to make. He was one to watch; though he took his licks well, and while Yin didn't respect him - _the man had threatened to start a holy war for fun_ \- he liked that he knew when he was in the wrong, even if he enjoyed being there. Ishranel could take a hit, even from a teammate, and keep smiling. To be fair, he could also be into it; this was a man who couldn't show his face or his bare ass at the mages guild. 

And then there's _Rook_.

They haven't known each other long, but there's an affinity between them, both Clerics, though you wouldn't be able to tell that simply from looking at them side-by-side. Rook, perhaps, he's small, agile, though far more affable than most Clerics Yin had come to know, though that was to be expected of a man who worshipped Tymora, Goddess of Good Fortune;  _lucky bastard._ He's young, chipper and personable and everything Yin's not. Yin has the unpleasant distinction of being gifted with the social skills of a particularly dense brick, and he tends to marvel about Rook's way with words. He works with an easy confidence; in the bar he'd made friends so easily, laughing and smiling, and could make for a prosperity preacher without the fraudulence that comes with it. But he lives a simple life and wants for nothing beyond the means to keep helping the world around him. 

And Yin feels selfish for wanting a boat. 

Both wear their respecting holy symbols around their necks, Yin's in a jar, Rook's being a simple coin. They shared little conversation beyond discussions of who would be best to heal their teammates, who seem to share a third of a brain between the eight of them.

"I knew you guys were stupid, but  _Oh My God._ " He's got his head in his hands, watching in horror as Ishramel is attempting to throw his follower into a magical forge that the party had discovered after yet another disastrous attempt at diplomacy involving lightning that, this time, wasn't actually Yin's fault. Yin's mostly indifferent, since after throwing the finger of their wizard-in-training into the forge, and watching the young man go as catatonic as everyone else who'd put blood into the forge, his curiosity was sated. 

Yin leaves Rook to tackle Ishranel, inspecting the forge, recognising both the forge, and it's properties once up close, coming to the violent realisation as to why their party members weren't waking up. The God who had imbued this forge with magic has been taking the souls of those who he knew to be unfaithful when they tried to use it. And it's back to shouting, arguing, trying to connect with the deity who can barely be reasoned with.

But Rook is quiet.

He and Yin share a look. 

The thing Yin knows he will never forget is the way Rook's hands shake as he takes off his holy symbol. And,  _oh_ , he's still praying as he lays it gently on Havok's chest, reverential, fearful. Rook is not a fearful man, but in this moment he is terrified. 

He picks up the symbol of the God to which his soul does not belong, and he is quiet for a  _very long moment_. 

Nothing happens, but everything has changed.

The three around them gasp awake, to themselves, to this realm, and Rook opens his eyes. Yin may be the only to see it, but he's not the same man he was a moment ago.

He is quiet as he details the exchange he made; his eternal soul and faith to this God who had their souls, had their existence in his grip, and in return, they'd find the owner of the forge and keep her safe. 

"And what about your God?" Yin asks, though there's dread in his heart, knowing what he was about to hear and fearing it all the same.

"She's not my God anymore. I don't think she ever will be again."

Yin is not a man of many words. He has not the emotional range to know how to comfort Rook in this time; the monk lays a hand on the reforged Cleric's arm, tries comforting words, but his tight smile doesn't reach his eyes. There's nothing back there. Not right now. Rook is hollow in ways that no mortal, no deity, no demon could ever truly understand. But Yin knows what it means to have faith, and he knows what it means to protect his own. Suddenly, there's a moment of clarity; Yin, who had spent his whole life grounded only by his faith, watches this man he's come to know, come to respect, renounce his own with shaking hands to keep his friends safe. Conviction stronger than faith; a man stronger than any steel that will ever be forged. 

The others won't -  _can't_ \- understand what Rook has sacrificed. How he's spent his life believing one thing, but choosing to forgo that belief for the greater good; selling his eternal soul to a deity who essentially has him in a choke hold, who doesn't care for him like Tymora would have after years of devotion, who is using him to guarantee the safety of someone far more devout, if only for the amount of time she's spent in worship of the God who Rook has only just connected to.

And, Yin would argue, she is far less worthy.

The world is cruel, this Yin knows, but it's something very different to see someone else suffer. Somehow it hurts far more.

Every moment Rook moves, he carries a weight inside of him, the knowledge that when he dies his soul will not come to rest with the Goddess his heart belongs to. An eternity amid souls and deities who don't want him is all that awaits at the end of his crusade; it is not a hero's death. It is not the fate Rook should have to suffer. Yin's soul will rest atop the waves with Valkur, but he will not let either of them die before Rook's faith is restored, before he gets the life and death and everything after and in between that he rightfully deserves.

He'll search every plane of existence for a way to bring Rook's faith back, and keep the stubbornly helpful, chaotically kind, damn _good_ soul alive for it, come hell or high water. Yin won't let him die before he's guaranteed the afterlife he deserves.

Yin will fight God for Rook.

And damn it,  _he'll win_.


End file.
